Jesus Christ, The Heart and Essence of Redemption

In Romans 5 verse 8, Paul writes that the love of God is being demonstrated for us in that while we are yet, or still sinners, Jesus Christ died for us.

Charles Spurgeon wrote: “The heart of the gospel is redemption, and the essence of redemption is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ”. Thus, both the heart and essence of our redemption is our Redeemer Jesus Christ. But look at verse 8 once again. God demonstrates his own love toward us. Present tense. Ongoing action. It is not that God showed His love for us 2,000 years ago, which of course He did! That’s past. That’s history. That is fixed, objective, unchanging.

The idea here is that God commends His love today through the past, historical, objective fact of the death of his Son for us. The past tense, “died” conveys the fact that the death of Jesus Christ happened once and for all and will not be repeated. The Apostle Peter wrote that Christ died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18). And what was the purpose of Jesus, the Just One, dying for unjust sinners like myself? That He might bring us to God! Being brought to The Father through Jesus Christ is the Mount Everest of our salvation. We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom we have now received the atonement.